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Like hedonistic rock stars that live by the “better to burn out than to fade away” credo, certain galaxies flame out in a blaze of glory. Astronomers have struggled to grasp why these young “starburst” galaxies—ones that are very rapidly forming new stars from cold molecular hydrogen gas up to 100 times faster than our own Milky Way—would shut down their prodigious star formation to join a category scientists call “red and dead.”

Many published microbiome studies are likely to have been contaminated and may incorrectly report the presence of microorganisms unintentionally introduced from the laboratory environment, says a study published in the open access journal BMC Biology. The findings could explain why unexpected bacteria have been previously identified in clinical samples and suggests that studies may have prematurely proposed links to disease.

Regardless of whether a business has been in the family for one year or one thousand, the person in charge typically hopes that handing the reins to a close relative will ensure security for future generations. But that’s easier said than done, given that 30 per cent of firms make it to the second generation of family ownership, and only 12 per cent make it to the third.

The study, led by researchers from the University of Western Sydney’s Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, along with researchers from the Australian National University, the University of Tasmania and James Cook University in Queensland, looked at the behaviour of common brushtail possums from a population in North Queensland that was exposed to high rates of predation by carpet pythons.

An international team of bioengineers has boosted the ability of bacteria to produce isopentenol, a compound with desirable gasoline properties. The finding, published in mBio, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, is a significant step toward developing a bacterial strain that can yield industrial quantities of renewable bio-gasoline.

Many pollutants with the potential to meddle with hormones—with bisphenol A (BPA) as a prime example—are already common in the environment. In an effort to clean up these pollutants found in the soil and waterways, scientists are now reporting a novel way to break them down by recruiting help from nanoparticles and light

Technicians of the Basque Institute for Agricultural Research and Development NEIKER-Tecnalia have in recent days been felling trees to simulate the effect of the wind in mountains in the Bizkaia locality of Artzentales. Forestry experts of the French Institute for Agricultural Research INRA together with technicians from NEIKER-Tecnalia and the Chartered Provincial Council of Bizkaia felled radiata pine specimens of different ages in order to find out their resistance to gales and observe the force the wind needs to exert to blow down these trees in the particular conditions of the Basque Country

A reassuring message on Friday from Facebook: “It’s important to us at Facebook to provide methods for people to use our site securely.” That is why Facebook implemented HTTPS across the service and Perfect Forward Secrecy, HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security), and other technologies. (In July 2013, Facebook announced they now use https by default for all Facebook users

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a way to use sound to create cellular scaffolding for tissue engineering, a unique approach that could help overcome one of regenerative medicine’s significant obstacles. The researchers will present their technique at the 168th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), held October 27-31, 2014, at the Indianapolis Marriott Downtown Hotel.